The approval of more than $60 billion in new military aid The Ukraine It feels like the cavalry arriving in town to save the day for the good guys. It’s a moment to be savored in a briefly bipartisan Washington — and even more so for troops fighting on the front lines in Ukraine.
Artillery shells are stored at an ammunition factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
ATACMS “will degrade Russian logistics inside Ukraine in the short term,” a senior government official said Tuesday. “In the long term, Russia will have to reconsider its strategy.” This could eventually pave the way for a fair negotiated peace.
Russian analysts recognize that they have lost momentum. With the new American aid, “some increase in Ukraine’s defensive potential, and also in its offensive potential, is possible,” according to Dmitry Stefanovich, a researcher at a strategic studies center associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences. He added that, on a “symbolic” level, US aid “will clearly boost the morale of the Ukrainian armed forces.”
Vasily Kashin, another analyst in Moscow, warned of new military pressure on Russia. “Ukraine will have additional high-precision weapons that it will use against our troops and our territory.” He added that the new air defense weapons for Ukraine “will once again limit the use of Russian aviation,” which in recent weeks has been hitting power plants and other targets in Ukraine almost at will.
Russian forces have taken advantage of the lack of Ukrainian air defense to attack power plants in the neighboring country
Photograph: Genya Savilov/AFP
The two Russian experts’ comments were cited this week by a Russian website called RTVI. They were translated and sent to me on Tuesday by retired Brigadier General Kevin Ryan, former defense attaché in Moscow.
How quickly can new US weapons be delivered to Ukraine? William B. Taylor Jr., former US ambassador to Kiev, believes that, as the Pentagon pre-positioned ammunition and other supplies in southern Poland, the new equipment could arrive “in a matter of days”. Government officials agree that some essential artillery ammunition could even be delivered within hours, depending on how many trucks Ukraine can muster.
Ukraine finds itself desperately short of air defense systems, and here, too, Congressional action will reduce the likelihood of disaster. Defending the skies over Ukraine is a complicated problem because the country has a mix of NATO and the Soviet era. Congressional action will allow the rapid deployment of U.S. interceptors, and the Biden administration is racing to obtain Soviet equipment from partner nations that used to be Moscow’s allies.
Ukraine’s weak air defenses will also be bolstered by what the Pentagon calls the “FrankenSAM” program, adapting Ukrainian-built launchers Soviet Union to use US surface-to-air missiles. This hybrid experiment was successful, the senior government official said.
American officials are urging the Ukrainians to use the new military aid to consolidate their lines and hold firm through the remainder of 2024, rather than precipitating another counter-offensive like last year’s unsuccessful push towards the Sea of Azov. “We need them to gain strength this year so they can retake territory next year,” said the senior government official.
Russian analysts warn that for all its recent problems, Ukraine was not on the brink of collapse. “In fact… there was no failure at the front, there was no abandonment of large and even small cities. The Ukrainian military is not surrendering en masse, etc.,” the RTVI commentary noted, adding that Ukraine has “an impressive number” of reservist troops.
“The Russians are as tired and demoralized as the Ukrainians,” Taylor argued. Although Moscow and Kiev are rife with rumors of a major Russian attack, Taylor is skeptical. “If the Russians had the ability to move forward, they would have done so” during the months of delays in the U.S. aid package, he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin talks to Russian military personnel in Moscow
Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/AP
A model for Ukraine’s resistance is the Finlandwho fought against Russian domination for 75 years before finally joining NATO last year. That story is told in a new Russian and English translation of a book titled “How Finland Survived Stalin,” which is widely read in Moscow, according to Finland’s ambassador to Washington, Mikko Hautala.
Josef Stalin thought he could dominate Finland, just as Vladimir Putin believed he could dominate Ukraine. Each of them believed that he was not taking on a real country, but rather reconquering a rebellious remnant of the Russian empire. To paraphrase a sentence from the book: what is the idea of Ukraine? Survive.
Thanks to President Biden and a strong bipartisan majority in Congress – and most of all to what could be hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded Ukrainians who fought in the darkest moments – the survival of an independent Ukraine seems more certain today than it did a week ago. / TRANSLATION BY AUGUSTO CALIL
